John Woo Presents Stranglehold £4.99 @ Play [PS3 Game]

Fans of film director John Woo’s Hard Boiled, starring Chow Yun-Fat as Inspector Tequila, fond of stiff drinks, pistols and releasing flocks of doves, can enjoy its spiritual successor, Stranglehold, available from Play for just £4.99!

According to a price-comparison, Play’s deal for Stranglehold is the cheapest around, with the customary offer of free delivery, too (compare on Gamebase). Stranglehold isn’t a John Woo copycat videogame; it’s an actual product the man himself helped develop, shaping the story and scenarios. It earned a 77/100 on MetaCritic, with critics citing the intense action, degradable scenery and typical Woo plotline as the game’s strengths.

Stranglehold follows Yun-Fat’s Inspector Tequila, a no-nonsense cop as skilled with a pistol as any gunslinger to grace Hong Kong’s neon-lit alleyways. Tequila is engaged in a bloody war with local slumlords, his day-to-day routine being sliding across tables, pistols flaring. But when his ex-wife is kidnapped by Russians in Chicago, Tequila must tread shady paths to save her.

The film Hard Boiled had an obvious influence on another game besides Stranglehold; Max Payne. Both share inherent similarities; a troubled cop with family problems, not to mention the visceral, bullet-spraying combat. Stranglehold’s environments are perhaps some of the most responsive to grace a videogame, with walls chipping away beneath gunfire, neon-signs shattering onto the pavement, and fruit and vegetables exploding into chunk. Tequila is also imbued with extrasensory abilities, able to slow time, dodge bullets and deliver his own execution moves, the camera tracking the bullet to its painful destination.

While on paper, such features appear brilliant, hold your virtual wallets for now. Like most games which champion such aesthetic features, Stranglehold is a depressingly repetitive game, with very little variation throughout its brief, six to seven hour campaign.

However, if you’re a fan of Hard Boiled, or John Woo in general, Stranglehold really is the closest to a sequel you’ll probably ever see. Also, I doubt any game can claim to include a virtual Chow Yun-Fat necking tequilas whilst mobsters converge in balconies overhead!

Thanks to floss313 from HotUkDeals

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